The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for communication, a recording medium, and a program, and particularly to an apparatus and a method for communication, a recording medium, and a program suitable for use in interconnecting a plurality of household communication apparatus and AV apparatus, for example.
Recently, network systems that interconnect personal computers and AV apparatus have been spreading to companies, schools and the like, and attempts have been made to distribute AV (audio-video) contents using the system. It is, of course, conceivable to apply the concept of such a network system to the replacement of wiring of AV apparatus within a house using audio cables and video cables with a data bus network. Conceivable as the data bus network is an IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 1394 data bus network or a LAN (Local Area Network) using TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), for example.
Replacing the wiring of AV apparatus within a house with a data bus network means connecting each of, for example, DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) players, displays (including television receivers), speakers and the like to a predetermined network. When a DVD is reproduced by a DVD player, for example, reproduced AV data is supplied to a display and a speaker or the like via the data bus network, and corresponding moving picture video and audio are output from the display and speaker or the like. A system that connects AV apparatus by a data bus network will hereinafter be referred to as an AV network system.
It is considered that a remote control unit (hereinafter also described as a remote control) is used for basic operation in an AV network system as described above. However, a method of remote control operation of the AV network system, a method of realizing it and the like have not been fully studied yet.
Thus, operation of an existing AV network system similar to operation of an audio-video system wired by conventional audio cables and video cables has been considered.
Consider an AV network system in which a first DVD player and a second DVD player are connected to one display (which may be a television receiver), for example. For the display to use an input from the first DVD player as an input 1 and an input from the second DVD player as an input 2, a user needs to perform such initial setting intentionally. In addition, setting is required each time the system is expanded, for example by adding a third DVD player.
Incidentally, there is a technique for performing the setting on behalf of the user by providing a function of automatically assigning input numbers of the input 1, the input 2 and the like from the DVD players to the display and the like. However, when the second DVD player is desired to be a source apparatus for the display, that is, video reproduced by the second DVD player is desired to be displayed on the display after the setting, the user needs to operate the remote control directed to the display to designate the source signal for display. Hence, when the function of automatically assigning input numbers is used, the user needs to be familiar with the result of the assignment.